DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE – FICTION SHORT STORY SERIAL

Chapter 2

The Accident

from Chronically Challenged: A Friday the 13th Love Story

Fiona had worn real jeans.

Not lab jeans. Not backup drawstring pants from her desk drawer. Real, going-out jeans—the stiff kind that didn’t stretch and made her walk like a mannequin for the first six minutes. She wasn’t even sure they still fit until twenty minutes ago, when she jumped into them like a hostage escaping a car trunk.

Now she was walking three inches behind Elliot, clutching her bag like it contained state secrets and suppressing the urge to sprint into traffic.

It’s just dinner. Just tacos. Just the most statistically cursed date on the calendar with a man whose hair won’t lie flat and whose smile makes your hippocampus melt.

Thunder cracked somewhere behind them.

Of course it did. Friday the 13th.

Elliot didn’t seem to notice. Or care. He strolled ahead in yet another Ramones shirt—faded black with one rolled sleeve higher than the other—a zip-up hoodie, and sneakers that looked like they’d lost a fight with battery acid. His hair was slightly neater than usual, but still refused to be tamed. Fiona suspected he had brushed it once and then immediately run a hand through it out of habit. The result was… heartbreakingly consistent.

“Did you know,” he said, stepping over a puddle, “that time is technically a human illusion and nothing actually moves forward?”

Fiona blinked. “That’s your opener?”

“I thought it was romantic.”

She laughed, a small, sharp bark she instantly regretted. Too loud. She tried again with a polite smile, folding her nervous system in on itself like origami.

They arrived at the taco truck she had half-joked about via text and secretly hoped he’d take seriously. He had. Of course, he had. Of course, he’d actually listened.

“After you,” Elliot said, gesturing with a little bow. She wondered if he’d practiced that move in the mirror.

She ordered first—tacos al pastor and horchata, the default comfort food. He stepped up after her.

“Do you think I can get one extra spicy and one sentient?” he asked the cashier.

The woman didn’t blink. “$10.50.”

They took their paper trays to a folding table under a vinyl canopy flapping in the wind. The sky rumbled, and the air tasted like ozone and grilled meat.

Fiona had just taken her second bite—salty, sweet, and absurdly good—when something flashed in her bag. Faint. Blue. Pulsing.

She froze.

No. No no no no no—

“Tell me you didn’t,” she muttered, already opening the zipper.

“I didn’t what?” Elliot asked, mouth full.

She pulled out the chrono-lattice remote node. It blinked at her like a smug little gremlin.

“I thought we powered it down.”

“I mean… we meant to,” he said.

“Did you unplug it from the laptop or the outlet?”

He paused. “Oh no.”

Before she could launch her taco at his head, the device let out a mechanical whine—a horrible, high-pitched chirp like a dial-up modem made of bees.

The air shimmered. Her vision pixelated. Everything sounded like it was underwater.

There was a loud snap.
A pop.
A disorienting sensation, like something deep inside her chest was being unzipped sideways.

And then—

Darkness.

---

She hit the ground hard. Grass, not pavement. Her knees sank into the soil. Her palms scraped on roots.

The smell hit her next—damp earth, smoke, sweat, and something distinctly horse-related.

When she looked up, the taco truck was gone.

So was the canopy. The sidewalk. The twenty-first century.

They were in a clearing, surrounded by trees. A man in a tri-corner hat shouted something about a musket. A horse neighed in the distance. Elliot was coughing beside her, brushing dirt from his hoodie.

Fiona checked the device. Its screen blinked once before settling on:

🕰️ DATE: APRIL 13, 1776
STATUS: TEMPORAL LOCK — NEXT JUMP AVAILABLE IN ONE MONTH

Her stomach dropped. Her pulse spiked.

“This is fine,” she said aloud, voice high and brittle.

Then, silently:
“This is probably fine. This is not an omen. Definitely not a red flag. It’s just a surprise… historical relocation. That happens. On dates. Right?”

“Is this a red flag? Is this a sign? Don’t freak out. So, what? We’re in 1776. What could go wrong?”

A musket fired. A goat ran past wearing some kind of colonial baby bonnet. A horse sneezed.

She blinked hard. “Okay. That’s a sign.”

Elliot was crouching in the grass, patting the earth in wide, sweeping motions. “Glasses. Glasses…”

“Please tell me you didn’t—”

“They were the good ones,” he groaned. “No tape. I wore my date pair.”

She turned in place, scanning the grass, the trees, the 1770s chaos swirling around them like historical cosplay gone feral.

Elliot looked up at her, squinting. “Do you think our kids will believe this was our first date?”

Fiona opened her mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again. “Do you say things like that often?”

“Only when I’ve been hurled through time by a semi-functional lattice array with someone I really like.”

Despite herself, despite the mud and her probable allergy to 18th-century everything, her mouth twitched. Just slightly.

She knelt to help him search. “Let’s find your glasses before your future children start thinking you’re smooth.”

Elliot smiled faintly. “We can’t have that.”